Chapter 127: Double Breakthrough
Editor: Atlas Studios
Although Senior Sister Liu was defeated, the other party did not heavily injure her, so she did not suffer much injuries. It was just that after she returned, she was a little depressed and upset.
The few disciples went up to comfort her. However, the few Foundation Establishment realm senior brothers did not say that they wanted to “beat Shen Ruoshi” for her.
Clearly, no one had the confidence. After all, the Earth Dust Scripture was especially effective against body cultivators. They did not know if their master, Elder He, had any useful suggestions.
Senior Sister Liu returned to wash her body while Jiang Li and the other disciples continued to watch the martial arts competition.
There were many disciples from the Demon Vanquishing Hall who participated in the martial arts competition. Jiang Li and his fellow disciples watched the sunset together. The baskets of eggs had also been used up. Only then did the first day of the martial arts competition come to an end.
It had to be said that the disciples of the Demon Vanquishing Hall often carried out missions to subdue demons. Their skill in combat was quite impressive.
On the first day of the martial arts competition, overall, they had more wins than losses. Only when they met the disciples of the Heaven and Earth Hall would they be pressured or suppressed.
This was because the disciples of the Heaven and Earth Hall did not have poor aptitudes. The ones they recruited were basically the most talented disciples among the new disciples every year.
Of course, there were also disciples with top-grade spiritual roots from the other halls. It was just that they were not as many as the Heaven and Earth Hall of the Valley Master’s lineage.
This point could be seen from the fact that Qi Tianya, that top-grade spiritual root disciple, was not under the Valley Master but was only a disciple of an ordinary Heaven and Earth Hall elder.
Even if not everyone among them knew the Earth Dust Scripture, under the circumstances of age restriction, the faster cultivation speed brought about by high-grade spiritual roots would also allow them to form a considerable suppression towards the other disciples.
However, geniuses were always scarce. While the Heaven and Earth Hall adhered to the high requirements of the disciples, it naturally meant that the number of disciples was limited.
In terms of number of disciples, the Demon Vanquishing Hall had the absolute advantage. If the Demon Vanquishing Hall and the Heaven and Earth Hall fought in a group, their chances of winning were still very high.
In addition, fast cultivation speed? They might be able to suppress others, but it was hard to say when faced against Jiang Li.
Jiang Li grunted and returned to his luxurious residence to meditate.
The spiritual qi in his body was already stirring, ready to break through at any moment.
This cultivation speed was simply as if a cheat had been activated.
Originally, when Jiang Li first entered the Qi Refinement realm, he had relied on the Yin qi of the outer sect graveyard to increase the strength of his spiritual qi by 20-30% compared to cultivators of the same cultivation realm, so the might of his spell techniques was greater.
Moreover, since the beginning of his cultivation, Jiang Li had never experienced the ordeal of painstakingly absorbing spiritual qi from the outside world bit by bit.
He had the statuses of [Wood-Yin Infusion] and [Accelerated Qi Nourishment] on him all year round. They were basically providing the most suitable attribute spiritual qi into his body for refinement.
After that, he obtained the status of [Spiritual Qi Infusion], which made his cultivation speed even faster.
It had to be said that high-grade spirit stones were indeed high-grade. The purity of the spiritual qi inside was even higher than the Wood-Yin spiritual qi that Jiang Li had painstakingly cultivated.
For a few months, Jiang Li only focused on Qi Refinement every day, refining the spiritual qi that continuously surged out of his body. While his cultivation soared, the strength of the spiritual qi also rose bit by bit under this kind of nourishment.
Previously, he had roughly estimated that the strength of his spiritual qi was roughly twice that of cultivators of the same level. If two spell techniques collided with each other, his spell technique would definitely be able to crush his opponent.
With such buffs, the difficulty of breaking through realms, which ordinary cultivators would scratch their heads in frustration, seemed to become insignificant in front of him.
Soon, he would break through to the late-stage Qi Refinement realm. At that time, the Ghost Wood Art would produce some new changes.
Focusing his mind, the Ghost Wood Art, with the augmentation of several statuses, began to circulate crazily as if he was on a highway without any other cars.
In his consciousness, a small ghostwood tree with lush leaves was gently swaying in the space that clearly could not have wind.
The trunk of the ghostwood tree was about the thickness of an arm. Although it was no longer a sprout, it had not yet matured.
If one observed carefully, they would discover that there was a small mound on the ground beside the ghostwood tree.
Under this mound was none other than the ghost that had entered Jiang Li’s consciousness through the demonic ape and was captured by the ghostwood tree roots.
As he circulated the Ghost Wood Art, Jiang Li could feel the ghostwood tree in his consciousness stirring.
It was as if he had reached a certain limit. He only needed one last push to succeed.
He gently took a breath and with a thought, an iron ring on the Dragon Imprisoning Lock that was originally emitting a faint light was immediately extinguished.
One of the spiritual qi currents that were flowing towards the Dragon Imprisoning Lock was temporarily cut off by him.
In the next second, the spiritual qi in his body surged even more and instantly broke the barrier between minor realms.
Jiang Li felt as if he was a patient who had been bedridden for 30 years. He stretched lazily, and his entire body felt comfortable all over.
In his consciousness, the ghostwood tree grew rapidly as if time was accelerated.
The height of the tree increased rapidly, the tree trunk became thicker, and the branches and leaves expanded to cover a wider and larger area. The roots under the soil were also continuously climbing deeper into the soil.
About half an hour later, Jiang Li slowly opened his eyes and spat out a mouthful of air, causing it to spray out for over 30m. It struck the wall and even forcefully scraped off a layer of dust.
Was this the late-stage Qi Refinement realm?
The quantity and strength of the spiritual qi had both increased by nearly 50%.
In addition, the spiritual qi seemed to be different from before.
Jiang Li closed his eyes to sense for a moment, and he had a slight understanding of the current changes in the Ghost Wood Art.
After some thought, he took out the coffin and threw it to the ground. The coffin opened, and inside was darkness that seemed to be able to devour everything.
Jiang Li opened his palm. A ball of spiritual qi slowly appeared on his palm. However, it was not as scattered as usual. Instead, it condensed into a ball and slowly changed its shape.
A moment later, dark green spiritual qi formed a translucent root in Jiang Li’s palm.
At the late-stage Qi Refinement realm, one did not need to use spell techniques. Just by using spiritual qi, one could already show some of the characteristics of the cultivation method.
For example, this!
Jiang Li stretched out his hand. The dark green spiritual qi root shot forward and grew, entering the coffin.
Then, the root curled and pulled. A faint black shadow was pulled out from the coffin by Jiang Li.
This was a ghost that had been transformed from a soul. It could be seen with the naked eye.
The 300,000 spirits in the coffin had already transformed drastically.
Most of the souls had already been combined together again. Under the nourishment of the increasingly dense spiritual qi in the Yin Burial Coffin, they had already transformed into initial-grade ghosts with a certain degree of combat ability.
As for where this spiritual qi came from?
That was naturally the large amount of high-grade spiritual qi that Jiang Li had continuously invested in the past few months.
The 50 points of high-grade spiritual qi per second was fine for a short period of time, but as time passed, the sword cultivator clone and Dragon Imprisoning Lock would suffer from indigestion.
However, this coffin contained an inner space. Even if one could not absorb and use the spiritual qi, they could still transfer it directly into the space to store it. Therefore, most of the spiritual qi during this period of time had actually been stored in the coffin.
With the Yin Burial special ability of the artifact, the high-grade spiritual qi became the Yin Burial spiritual qi that filled the internal space.
The 300,000 souls had been nourished by the Yin Burial spiritual qi for a few months before they collectively evolved into stronger ghosts.
How strong were these ghosts now?
They were probably at the level where they could easily kill and eat humans alone, could fight with mortal Daoists without spiritual qi, and would be easily destroyed by a talisman of a true cultivator.
It was not much different from the ghosts in mortal legends.
However, although they were weak initial-stage ghosts, countless ants could bite an elephant to death. If he released all 300,000 ghosts, even if ten Foundation Establishment cultivators came, they would probably not be able to withstand it.
This ghost was now bound by dark green spiritual qi roots. Pain flashed across its blurry ghost face from time to time, but it did not resist at all.
Jiang Li was not at all worried that he would suffer a backlash from the ghosts.
This was because besides being a storage artifact, the main function of the coffin was still in the field of logistics, its specialty was to refine various Yin attribute ghosts and spirits.
Like the zombies, skeletons, ghosts, and others.
The more Yin Burial spiritual qi these ghosts absorbed, the stronger the coffin’s control over them.
Moreover, the foundation of this group of ghosts was too weak. More than 95% of their strength came from Jiang Li. Not to mention now, even if all of them became Ghost Kings, they would be unable to resist his will.
The spiritual qi root slowly retracted, pulling the ghost into his palm.
Jiang Li only felt a chill run through his palm, and then this feeling flowed along his arm and quickly entered the space between his brows before vanishing.
He closed his eyes and entered his consciousness again. A small bump appeared on the ground beside the tall ghostwood tree.
Ghostwood! Ghost within the Wood!
It nurtures a lonely and sinister ghost…
After cultivating to the late-stage Qi Refinement realm, the special traits of the Ghost Wood Art finally began to gradually appear.
Now, Jiang Li was no longer in the state where ghosts had to enter his sea of consciousness for him to capture them.
The current Ghost Wood Art could already create spiritual qi tree roots and actively capture ghosts.
Moreover, capturing ghosts and binding them under the roots could bring Jiang Li several other uses.
Jiang Li stretched out his palm, and a layer of green light blossomed on it. The thin wooden armor suddenly started to grow, and it quickly covered his entire right hand.
Although it was not very obvious, the strength of his spiritual qi had indeed increased again.
Moreover, if he were to spend a little more time, the ghosts captured by the roots would transform into lumps that would adhere to the roots. If there were more of them, then it would greatly increase the amount of spiritual qi Jiang Li had. It could be considered a bonus to his cheat.
Of course, this effect was useless to him, he had never lacked spiritual qi since he started cultivating.
Jiang Li did not care about anything else. He grabbed another 30 ghosts and dragged them into his body. He only stopped when he reached the limit of his current cultivation method.
These 32 ghosts needed to be transformed into lumps on the roots before he could continue kidnapping more.
Jiang Li was quite satisfied with his breakthrough to the late-stage Qi Refinement realm. He struck while the iron was hot and cultivated for the entire night.
On the morning of the next day, Jiang Li opened his eyes. He got up and was about to leave when his expression changed.
Crack!
A familiar voice sounded as Jiang Li’s expression changed. He lowered his head to look. As expected, the limestone floor beneath his feet had already shattered into hundreds of pieces along with spider web-like patterns.
He squeezed his palm, and the strength he felt increased again.
Jiang Li pulled out his interface in a daze and took a look. The “mid-stage Body Refinement realm” in the body cultivation column had unknowingly turned into the “late-stage Body Refinement realm”.
No wonder he felt such a huge reaction when he broke through previously. It turned out that not only had his Qi Refinement cultivation broken through, but his body cultivation had also reached the late-stage.
Alright, with the four beast blood tattoos and the combination of many body refinement pills, his body cultivation speed was not inferior to that of Qi Refinement.
It was a good thing that he had broken through to the late-stage of both body refinement and Qi Refinement cultivation.
However…
This breakthrough was really not timely.
They were still in the midst of the sect’s martial arts competition. Jiang Li was really afraid that he would accidentally kill someone with this sudden breakthrough.
Looking at the creaking ground, it was not impossible.
It seemed that he had wasted a basket of eggs yesterday.
However, it was too late to practice his punches on the mountain.
Jiang Li scratched his head. He was quite vexed.
After thinking for a long time, he suddenly looked at the Dragon Imprisoning Lock around his waist.
This thing might be of use.
Swoosh!
Under Jiang Li’s will, the pitch-black chain instantly came to life and circled around his body like a nimble snake.
It coiled from his waist to his arms.
Finally, there were two cracking sounds.
The shackles on both ends of the Dragon Imprisoning Lock wrapped around Jiang Li’s wrists.
An invisible pressure enveloped him, causing his swelling strength to gradually fall.
Under Jiang Li’s control, the Dragon Imprisoning Lock naturally did not unleash its strongest power directly.
Instead, it suppressed his strength bit by bit until Jiang Li felt that this level was something that he could barely accept.
He took two more steps. At the very least, the limestone floor did not crack open. This way, he could temporarily endure the sudden boost in strength.
There was really no one else who would shackle themselves like this.
Jiang Li shook his head gloomily. After he went out, he did not directly go to the venue to watch the competition.
He went to the Scripture Storage Pavilion in his current state.
He needed to find a body cultivation method that could help him control his strength.
Previously, Jiang Li already had a lot of cultivation tasks. Body cultivation, Qi Refinement, and listening to the Heart Sutra. Each of them required a lot of time, so he simply could not find any free time.
Furthermore, this was under the condition that he had handed over the matters of inscribing runes, learning how to forge weapons, and cultivating movement techniques to the parallel mind.
Therefore, he had previously thought that it would be enough to familiarize himself with controlling strength for a few days. There was no need to learn a spell technique as it was time-consuming.
However, the continuous loss of control of his powers told him that such situations would likely happen in the future. If he had to familiarize himself with it every time he lost control, then the time it would take would be more than learning one spell technique.
After passing through the inner sect, Jiang Li did not encounter the embarrassment he had when he was still an outer sect disciple. From time to time, he would encounter a group of registered disciples patrolling the area, and they had to bow to Jiang Li.
Soon, he knocked on the metal door embedded in the mountain wall.
In the Scripture Storage Pavilion, Elder Li was still drinking alone behind the counter.
Speaking of which, Jiang Li still had one more token that he had obtained from the Scripture Imparting Hall when he joined the inner sect.
He had to find a time to use it.
After bowing towards Elder Li, Jiang Li went to the bookshelf in the body cultivation area and started to search.
It was obvious that there were fewer people in this body cultivation area. The floating dust on the bookshelves were much thicker than other bookshelves.
Then, as he flipped through it, Jiang Li’s expression fell even more.
It seemed like in history, there were not many cases like him where one’s strength was unable to be controlled due to rapid growth.
Therefore, after searching for a long time, he did not find any technique that he liked in the body cultivation area.
This was quite awkward.
In fact, logically speaking, increasing the Mind attribute was the best solution for failing to control his strength.
Cultivation methods like the Bodhisattva Heart Sutra were very suitable for Jiang Li.
As long as he retracted his sword cultivator clone and obtained another mental enlightenment, he would quickly master this portion of overflowing power.
Or perhaps, he could choose to keep a parallel mind in his body to help Jiang Li control it better. Not only could it help in controlling his body, he could even multitask and scheme better in battles.
However, the problem was that his Bodhisattva Heart Sutra was still not at the level where it could create two parallel minds.
As for the sword cultivator clone, he could not easily abandon it for the time being. Therefore, he could not rely on the Heart Sutra for the time being. He had to find a strength controlling technique instead.
Jiang Li refused to believe in fate and searched for a long time, but he still did not obtain anything.
“Elder Li, Elder Li!”
Helpless, Jiang Li could only return to the counter and wake up Elder Li who was taking a nap.
The other party was not angry.
After Jiang Li told him about his needs, he thought for a moment and sized Jiang Li up before standing up and walking towards the depths of the Scripture Storage Pavilion.
Jiang Li’s eyes lit up. From the looks of it, there was a solution!
His footsteps followed closely behind Elder Li as they passed through the bookshelves. Soon, they returned to the body cultivation area.
Jiang Li was slightly puzzled. Didn’t he already search this place thoroughly? Could it be that he had missed out something?
Elder Li stopped in front of a bookshelf. His body swayed as if he was about to fall asleep at any moment.
After swaying for a long time, Elder Li finally held the bookshelf to steady his body and groggily searched the bookshelf.
